Entrevue

MUTEK.ES Previews: Getting to Know… Alba G. Corral

Performing at A/Visions 2, Sala Apolo [2] // February 9th

Pat Quinteiro - 11 janvier 2012

Performing alongside Stendhal Syndrome at Micro_MUTEK.ES is the Spanish duo’s frequent collaborator, visual artist Alba G. Corral. Based in Barcelona‚ Corral uses code to create visual tools in real time, giving life to abstract digital landscape. Her work focuses on visual programming, generative art and live cinema. Corral is also one of the organizers of the Femelek festival, which promotes the development of women in the world of creation and new technologies. Her work creates narratives that express sensitivity and taste for color. Improvisation in different realms such as digital sound and language become organic, abstract feelings that take shape through programming code.

PQ:2011 has been a magical year. You´ve recharged your energy to start new projects with Stendhal Syndrome, you worked with Jon Hopkins and Lorr, you came back to Sonar, went to the L.E.V Festival, Red Bull Music Academy, Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Punto y Raya Festival, and you interpreted and visualized Córtazar at the Caixaforum, not to mention the work of Victor Pérez-Porro. Exhausted?

AC: Not really. If you read all these things, you could think I am, but I feel lucky that I can do what I like and that I could participate in these events. It’s been a year full of good and beautiful experiences, and also of moments and situations from which I learned a lot. Probably I should say proud and happy. Unrepeatable year!

PQ:Reinterpreting and creating other artists’ emotions live requires a double journey, and furthermore in most of your performances you have absolute freedom and trust to be yourself in every image. How do you face these trips?

AC: Every project is different. It’s true that I have enough freedom as a creator, but always within a setting. Synchronicity and communication with a musician is necessary, the more chemistry, the more will we communicate. The journey must be mutual and with respect from both parts, something basic to enjoy and feel good about.

PQ:Your creative side coexists with your training part. Are you accustomed to giving lectures and training other visual creators? Where are you, in this regard? What does a visual creator have to face? Is there still a long way to go?

AC: It co-exists. It’s nice to share your knowledge with other people, especially because I feel very responsible for applying knowledge to the creative scene, making people understand that programming is not only for superior intellects, that it can also suit creative minds. Our goal is to become an additional tool for visual creation, I refer to live cinema and to creations realized in real-time code. We face the same blank canvas of a painter or the empty score of a musician. Just the tools are different, the whys are the same. It’s important to walk your path and we are walking it. There are more and more people creating their own visual tools and applying them to music. If mapping allows us, we will make it.

PQ:What are the goals of this smiling “madrileña” for 2012?

AC: It would be an honor to be at Stendhal’s side. To continue sharing the stage with them because, first of all, they are great friends.

Nikka and I want to prepare a new project together after The Space In Between and her new album Pandemia. It will be more surreal than spacial. The collaboration with Escort Service, which began this year (Punto y Raya/Caixa Forum) was precious, and I’d like to follow this line focusing more on auditoriums and museums. And ultimately, a wish: finally go to New York!